This post is sponsored by Sherwin Williams. A big thank you to Sherwin Williams for helping provide paint for this project. And a thank you for supporting the brands that help make this blog possible.

AND…. a very big shout out to my brother, Ash (who helped us run the lift and kicked off our first week of painting), my dad (who helped us problem solve the sprayer on more than one occasion and rebuilt new railings on my porch to match the rest of the house), my mom (who helped keep us fed and full), and last but definitely not least, Lonnie, my husband (who worked more hours then we can count prepping and painting this giant house).

It’s a big day for the McConnel house, WE PAINTED THE EXTERIOR OF OUR HOUSE! This is going to be a doozy of a post, so buckle up. Painting an old house is a BIG deal. Oh man, this feels like it was a long time coming. If you are new here, we own a 1918 two-story craftsman. I LOVE our house! We have only lived in Oleander neighborhood in Bakersfield, California. It’s our hood! I always knew that this is the house I wanted to own eventually. So, when it came on the market we listed our house the very next day.

When we bought this house, 4 1/2 years ago, it needed a fresh coat of paint. On the South side of the house, a lot of the siding was down to the bare boards. Even with peeling paint, I loved this house. But, now that it is freshly painted, I’ve fallen in love with this place all over again. It really looks like a totally different house, it’s crisp and fresh, but still feels like a classic old house.

Early on, we figured out how much it would cost to hire someone to paint our house (way too much), so we knew it would have to be a DIY job. And to be honest, my husband started scraping and sanding the exterior of our house over a year ago. He would put in at least 10 hours a week in the evenings and weekends. But when it came time to do the actual painting, we knew it was a job that would need to be done all at once and it would probably time a few weeks to complete. My husband is a high school teacher, so we do have a couple months in the Summer available. But, Summer’s here are 100+F, so that would be a very painfully hot job. So, year after year, we just put it off because we were busy with full time jobs, an airbnb to run and 3 kiddos. And then…. the pandemic hit. And we were here ALL THE TIME! Lonnie, my husband scraped and sanded more and more through the pandemic and right after the New Year, he said, “Let’s do this!”. And he rented a lift and ordered some primer. We probably could have prepped and sanded for the next decade, but once we had an actual date set we knew we had to go strong until it was done.

Our house is BIG and complicated with lots of different roof pitches and so, so many windows. And these are original windows, so it’s all wood and they all needed to be painted. We counted, there are over 300 panes of glass!!! (I will get an exact count for you soon).

3 years ago I wrote a blog post about painting our house all white. I made my mind up a long time ago that I wanted a white house. Originally, I thought I’d have some black details, maybe on the trim, windows or the airplane wings. I should explain, our house is an Airplane Craftsman. The second story is really only 1/2 a story and it comes up out of the middle of the house, with windows on all sides, making it feel like a cockpit. And then all the oversized eaves and exposed rafters resemble the wings.

Anyways, the more I looked at our house once the primer was on, I decided that the black was just not needed. My biggest worry was that the rafters in the eaves (which are a really unique detail to our house) would not be as visible as they were before. With the house being a darker color and the rafters being white, they really stood out. So I thought the rafters needed to be a contrasting color. But, when I saw them all white, it just made sense. It really is all about the light and all the shadows that are cast at different times of the day. The details were not lost when everything went all white.

Before I give you all the DIY steps and details, let’s talk color. While we went with no color, picking the right white really is important. If you have been around here for a while, you know that Sherwin Williams Alabaster White is my GO-TO white. I’ve painted all the trim and many walls in my last two houses this same warm white. I chose it 17 years ago for our built-ins in our first house, and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s warm without being yellow, and crisp without being cool and flat. It really is a perfect white for an older home (in my opinion). So, we HAD to go Alabaster with the exterior.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we had the kids paint the fence. Yep, we were those parents. But honestly, it got them out in the fresh air and doing something when there was absolutely nothing to do. The fence was a bright emerald green. and while I love the color green, it felt too bright and brought way more attention to the fence then the house. We went with Sherwin Williams Black Magic and it is absolutely perfect with our all white house.

Ok, from start to finish, it took us just over 6 weeks. That was every afternoon, evening, weekend and even some days we both took off work to paint. Yep, it was a lot of work, but I honestly think we did a better job than any painter we could have hired. We were perfectionists and took care of every inch of this exterior.

Do I think you should paint your house? YES! If we can do it, you totally can! But, you’ve got to really want it. Because you are going to be frustrated and tired and covered in paint at times. And you aren’t going to have any down time for quite a few weeks. But, SO SO WORTH IT! I feel so much pride and accomplishment with finishing this project.

Well it turns out I had a lot to say and a lot of pictures of our house to share, so please come back tomorrow for the full how-to. I have all the supplies and details on how we did this job start to finish.